At the end of 2012, I wrote about mobile tools that allow us to be seriously productive while being mobile. What’s changed since then? Essentially, you can do those same tasks better and faster and you can do more than you did three years ago. The “better and faster” essentially comes down to hardware tweaks of faster processors, more memory and better screens (across tablets, smartphones and e-readers). The “more” bit is that my previous Surface RT ran a restricted version of Windows with more limited tablet-based applications (similar to the iPad but more productivity oriented) while my Surface Pro 3 runs full Windows on which all of my applications run and my phone can act like a desktop using a display dock. In this post, I’ll dive into this a bit more.

My previous, 2012 set up: A Kindle Paperwhite (version 1), Microsoft Surface RT, Nokia Lumia 920 and Moleskine Large Ruled notebook. There is very little I couldn’t do with these tools in terms of research, reading, music, video and writing.

On the surface (OK, pun intended), these seem quite similar. While the 2012 versions were quite capable, there are core differences

Tablet

The Surface RT had a 10 in. 1366 x 768 (for comparison, 720p is 1280 x 720) screen with 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage (with a microSD slot for another 64 GB), using a Quad Core Tegra 3 Processor running a limited version of Windows. This is a capable machine for most documentation, web-browsing and email tasks. It was light, relatively inexpensive, came with Microsoft Office, had a long battery life and worked well.

Now, that’s a lot of numbers but it basically means you have a full desktop replacement computer that can fit on a Starbucks table getting it all done. The stylus comes in handy for sketching out ideas on OneNote and that gorgeous screen is lovely when you’re watching Sherlock Season 3 for the third time whilst waiting for The Abomnidable Bride episode. Often overlooked, but important in this day of cloud computing and streaming, it also adds 802.11 ac, MIMO which means better and quicker connectivity.

Phone:

Nokia Lumia 920 had a 4.5 in, 1280 x 768 screen with 1 GB of RAM with 32 GB of storage with a Qualcomm dual-core Snapdragon S4 running Windows Phone 8.1 with an 8.7 megapixle camera (one of the first with optical image stablization) weighing in at 185 g being 10.7 mm thick. This meant it was a very capabable phone with a supurb camera and terrific screen. All of the Audible books, music and video you could wish.

Microsoft Lumia 950 has a 5.2 in, 2560 x 1440 screen with 3 GB of RAM with 32 GB of storage (with a microSD slot for another 64 GB which can go up to 200 GB), with a Qualcomm six-core Snapdragon 808 running Windows 10 (mobile) with a 20 megapixle camera (still with OIS) weighing in at 150 g being 8.2 mm thick. This means it’s an amazing phone with a stunning camera and utterly gorgeous screen. The user interface is similar to Windows 10 on the Surface Pro 3; with a display dock (and using Continuum), keyboard and monitor, it can become an office away from home.

Kindle Paperwhite (v1) – a 6 in marvel which allows you to read anywhere, save highlights, take notes and save them to the cloud and sync with your Audible books. This version weighed 223 g, 9.1 mm thick and had a screen resolution of 768 x 1024 with a density of 212 ppi. (For more on the benefits of the Kindle e-reader, see here.) While it’s another device to carry, don’t use a notebook, tablet (even a Fire) or phone for reading, either use paper or an e-ink reader like the Paperwhite.

Kindle Paperwhite (v3) – Very similar to the first version but with a super sharp 1440 x 1080, 300 ppi screen weighing 205 g, 9 mm thick.

With font tuning and a sharp screen, the Paperwhite is a delight to use. (I once owned a Kindle Voyage which is slightly lighter and thinner than the Paperwhite with the same sharp screen, but it decided to keep traveling in an Uber car somewhere in Orlando). This is my primary tool for reading; I carry thousands of books wherever I go.

Anything I can do in the office, I can do on the road. I can Skype into a conference call, share documents, research, read, review and design. That wasn’t quite true in 2012; I could do most of what I needed to do, but had some limitations due to a limited version of Windows. That limitation is gone. The other difference in 2015 is that it’s all easier, quick and works more smoothly. Moving from Surface to Lumia is straight-forward with a shared Windows 10 core, applications that work on both and the ability to pop into desktop mode on my phone makes finishing updates to documents dead easy.

Now, admittedly, the old homestead is still more productive, but even then, the shared tools mean no more copying, file moving and syncing:

-The Better Big Brother

There never was a better time to be mobile, whether that’s working in your backyard, at a hotel or at Caribou. Power, precision and a lovely experience are all available on the road.

The Lumia series has an audio setting for headphones using processing from Dolby.

While many rave on the setting for music, I don’t use because 1) I like unaltered sound (more about this here) and 2) I like a forward, intimate sound stage rather than a broad one. However, when it comes to audio books, it really rocks. It broadens the sound stage to something similar to watching a movie. One of the best uses of this is listening to Ender’s Game Alive (more here) which is a well produced audio play version of the book with a full cast, sound effects and a full range of sound placement. For example, when Ender & Petra are spinning in the battle room, their voices spin around you. The echo when Ender and Bean talk from inside of the Formic’s cave is perfect. [Note: As of 9/25/14, the CD version is on sale at Amazon for an amazing $4.33! Audible is still only $11.95] The sound is stunning with my Shure SE215s.

In the mobile world, change has been and continues to be a driving force. As consumers, we watch this relentless change even while we wait a couple of years between changing phones. (Yes, I know there are expensive programs to accelerate this, but for most of us in the U.S., our mobile bill is too high a percentage of our costs as it stands.) I recently reflected on my move from Android to Windows Phone a year and a half into the switch.

Nokia Lumia 920

The two take aways from this experience has been that it’s been a great experience, overall. If I could do it all over again with the ability to choose any phone available at the time, I would still choose the Lumia 920 and, with it, Windows Phone 8. The other take away is that my desire to upgrade this long into my two-year contract is much less than in devious phone cycles. I would love the Lumia Icon, for example, but I’m still happy. So, there’s no real desperation. Nonetheless, I’m starting to think about my options when my contract is up within the next six months.

One of the really smart things to do with customers looking for newer, bigger, better & stronger is to at least freshen up what they have. Actually, in the mobile space, where there is so much change, providing good and frequent updates, quickly made available to customers, is critical. Nokia has worked really hard to bring new experiences to the Lumia line through apps and updates. Microsoft has helped in this process and, I hope, will take up the baton. The Windows Phone ecosystem has allowed this to happen faster than Android, albeit with some carrier delays. Android is so fragmented that you were lucky if you received one update within your two year contract and it came much later than for the same phone without the carrier add-ons.

Windows Phone 8 Left – Windows Phone 8.1 Right

As you can see above, 8.1 enables transparent tiles with a background picture allowed to display (yes, it’s a Tardis – this is called Joe’s Geekfest, after all). It also allows more tiles on the screen. This seems small, but when your window into your mobile world looks significantly different, your mobile experience is different. Of course, the update isn’t just eye candy, but the point is that well into the second half of my contract, where I might be getting antsy for a new experience, I get one. My eye is less likely to rove to a new platform, phone or carrier. This is not just nice, this make really good business sense. When those updates come out and many of your customers can’t experience them (or have a very delayed experience}, you have just the opposite effect – you alienate your customer. You become the worst kind of tease when others are moving on to new things.

Now if were just sugar, the thrill is short. Fortunately Microsoft and Nokia (now part of Microsoft) are smarter than that. There is lots more available in this update, but I’ll highlight two that are both functional and improve the aesthetic experience, both visually and sonically, namely Cortana and the updated calendar.

Cute Cortana vs. Siri ad

Cortana: Windows Phone already had pretty good voice integration (certainly better than my old Froyo & Gingerbread Android experience). Cortana not only enhances that experience but sounds natural, even conversational. This is in no small part due to employing Jen Taylor’s voice talent (the voice of Cortana in the Halo game series). It also in how it’s rendered and the algorithms in it’s response. While “my” Cortana is still learning and defaults pretty readily to a web search, it does a nice job responding.

Calendar: With Windows Phone 8, you typically went between a day, month and to do views.

Windows Phone 8 Calendar

Whereas 8.1 has views that dynamically allow you to drill in. So, the default look at the week is:

Selecting into a day brings an scrollable, expanded view:

Not huge, but hugely useful. The weather’s a nice touch as well.

Like I said before, lots of other nice touches, from an integrated Skype button on calling screen to better granularity in notification sounds and volume.

The salient point is that even with carrier delays, Windows Phone 8 users have or will have the updates and they’ll have a new experience to tide them over. In our own customers experiences, there are often big wins with small updates that keep it fresh even while we plan larger changes. Happy now and happier later.

Well, it’s a bit over a year and half into my Nokia Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8 life. (I came from Android, go here for more on my transition). Normally, at this point in the life of my contract is where I get a bit itchy for the next phone. I start looking down the horizon of what’s coming. Part of this my geeky self looking for the next cool toy but, at least in the past, my phone was really missing something or beginning to be troublesome such as crashing with some frequency, battery dying quickly or not connecting well. In other words, I reallywas ready for a new phone. While I love Nokia 1020’s camera and I love the Nokia Icon overall, I’m happy right where I am. The phone remains snappy, the battery is decent, the photos are great and it rarely has glitches. It just works and it’s fairly intuitive. Yes folks, a year and half in, I really still love my phone and the Windows Phone platform. Crazy, right?

Nokia Lumia 920 with Nokia-Monster Purity HD headphones

Before diving into my reflections, let me give you some context by describing my main uses of my phone and to do that I need to tell you what I do and what I love. I’m in IT for an insurance company, so I like to keep current and experiment a bit with new geek toys. I love books, including audio books (I constantly use the Audible app). I love music (even when I’m reading books); I have fairly eclectic tastes (eveything from The Tallis Scholars and Anne Akiko Meyers on the classical side to OneRepublic, Civil Wars and Ed Sheeran the pop/folk side to a little M83 and Daft Punk and everything in between. So a subscription service is really great to explore and Xbox Music and, more recently, Beats Music are great. (Neither Pandora or Spotify serve well for someone who, like me and unlike most of the planet, is album oriented such as myself). I am a somewhat casual photographer; a bit more than point and shoot but not a lot of manual settings. I play games but like to do that more on a larger platform (e.g., a tablet like the Microsoft Surface – go Halo Spartan.) Oh, and I talk and text as well :)

Nokia Lumia 920

What’s been the surprisingly great stuff?

– The Ecosystem: While the media would suggest that I ought to be slitting my wrists over the dearth of apps, this platform actually works for me. All of the major apps I use, Audible, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Netflix, Office, Kindle, YouVersion Bible, Pandora etc. are on the platform. This took a bit of time for some of them, but they’re all here. If you have some special needs or need 50 different choices of a Twitter client (I keep returning to the native Twitter client from Twitter), then you may need a larger ecosystem. Are there some apps I would love to see on Windows Phone 8 that aren’t there (talking to you Amazon Cloud Music client)? Sure. Nothing critical however.

– Wireless charging: it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but plopping this down my charger on the desk and picking it up without plugging and unplugging is hugely convenient.

– Nokia: Since they’ve had to push for market share (in the overall phone market, they own the Windows Phone market), they are constantly looking for cool new things. Nokia Camera, updates, City Lens, the various Here apps. Rock-a-lockin’ I like being with a company that’s hungry. Yeah competition. I hope and trust Microsoft will serve as good owners.

– Office: Looking at or editing documents or spreadsheets have been a nightmare on the phone in the past. On this phone, they read well. Formatting is preserved and re-sizing to read it is a breeze. Editing is still a bit of a challenge simply due to the form factor, but it’s eminently doable and not like gouging my eyes out. The phone is a great compliment to a mobile office.

Lumia 920: Just a flat out great phone. I’ve played with iPhones (4S & 5), Samsung S3’s & HTC’s One X with more than casualness. I love the 920. Other phones, for me, have worked fine. There are little touches with the Lumia 920 that just bring delight for me.

What don’t I love?

Whispersynch from Paperwhite to Audible Player (WP8) with Emma Newman’s marvelous Between Two Thorns.

– I have a love/hate relationship with Audible on Windows Phone 8. 90% of the time I love Audible on Windows Phone – it plays well with good bookmarking and uses Whispersync for Voice well. The hate part is it’s a bit resource intensive and switching between an incoming call (or an incoming text being read through my bluetooth headset -Jawbone Icon HD) can cause hiccups. At worst, I have to restart it, but I would like that to be smoother.

That’s pretty much the only major challenge. The normal phone stuff works well (calls, text, conference call, pairing to bluetooth etc). The apps behave. I think some of this points to a more mature market; phone capabilities are not changing as fast as they used to. Part of this is, I believe, the OS. Even when it first came out, the 920 didn’t have the fastest processors, biggest batteries etc. Yet it has never felt sluggish and, (some due to wireless charging), I rarely have to give thought to battery life. So being clever in build and design is as important as being brawny; this is an argument Apple been giving (and winning with) for years.

What did I think I would really miss but haven’t

– Replaceable battery: I had an external charger for my battery that didn’t requirement my phone to be plugged in. So I typically had one ready and one charging. As long as I had the batteries with me, I didn’t worry about running low. My phone used them up fairly quickly (4 – 6 hours depending on how new that battery was and what I was doing), but this was a workable solution. Due to wireless charging and Windows Phone’s relatively good power management, this hasn’t been an issue. I’m not sure I would risk this with Android (although it can be done – Motorola Maxx has great battery life)

– External memory slot: I didn’t have a ton of on-board memory (16 gb with 10 user-available) but had a 32gb card. Due to Lumia 920’s 32 GB on board memory and much more cloud storage and streaming, this has not been an issue. It’s also been nice not trying to manage where things live. Even though Android would support loading apps to the card, many apps would not support it. So storage got tight on my old phone even though I had plenty on my card. Photos and documents automatically upload to the cloud on OneDrive, I don’t store much music or video locally; I stream most of it.

– Swype: I really liked Swype. Due to a good predictive keyboard and more use of voice-to-text for things like texting, this has not been a big deal. Will I check out the swiping-style keyboard in 8.1? Sure.

So, we’ll see what’s on the horizon, but I don’t have a burning desire or need to upgrade with a bit less than half a year on my contract. Now that’s a nice place to be.

but I wanted to separately call out one of the more mundane but critical features that the headset makes practical – voice texting. While voice texting is not unique to the Nokia Lumia 920 (it uses the native Windows Phone 8 features for this), it is one of the best executions of it I’ve seen. Pair that capability with the Icon HD (yes, pun intended), a remarkably well designed feature emerges. Suppose, while driving, I’m listening to John Rothfuss’s The Wise Man’s Fear on Audible and a text comes in. Now, we know I’m not to text and drive.

The pull to look, at least, is strong. Then I rationalize “I’ll just text back at the light”. The light changes quickly, for once, “Oh, I’m almost done”. Not good, now I’m texting and driving. When a text comes in with my current setup, assuming I have the Icon on, the book pauses, the phone reads “Text from …, read it or ignore.” I say, “Read it.” After reading, it asks if I want to reply or I’m done. If I reply, I can dictate the message. Windows Phone 8’s native application translates this with stunning accuracy into a message and reads it back to me to verify. Once I’ve heard it, I can send it, add to it or start over. No whacked out messages get sent. Now my hands are on the wheel, my eyes are on the road and I don’t feel compelled to pull over or to risk “just a quick message”.

Can you be distracted by voice texting? Of course, just as a hands-free phone call can distract you. For me, it is exponentially safer. If texting gets involved, just like a phone call, I’ll pull over and deal with it.

All of this is automatically handled when I’m in bluetooth mode; when I’m not using my headset, I just receive a “ping” notification and read it normally. When I’m done with voice texting, I pick up where I left on Kvothe’s adventures in my audio book. Life is good and just a little bit safer.

A couple of months ago, I bought a new Bluetooth headset as my last one went missing. These have always been fairly important but utilitarian objects to me. I’ve had a number of good ones, everything from the Plantronics Voyager (which could be used with my office and mobile phone), to Motorola H12, back to Plantronics Discovery 925 and finally the Jawbone Icon HD (Thinker).

The raison d’être for picking the Icon HD was its ability to use A2DP and, hence, pick up all sounds off of the phone; in particular, I can listen to my books on Audible (as well as ones from the Library on Overdrive). It can also pick up music and video sound, but I’ll use my Shure SE215‘s on the road or, at home, my Grado SR 80 ’s for that purpose. Don’t get me wrong, the Jawbone is fabulous for calls. Listening to calls is crystal clear (most headsets do this), they can hear me well (much rarer), battery lasts a long time, its Noise Assassin wipes out background noise and it fits well in my ear. I could go on, however, the differentiating driving force is the ability to listen to audio books.

Wow, how cool it is to be wireless and free, listening to my audio books wherever I want and whenever I want. Cleaning up & John Scalzi’s Redshirts, doing dishes & Michael Underwood’s Geekomancyor ironing and Erin Mortgenstern’s The Night Circus lead to much happier chores. In a more reflective mode, I may listen to a passage from Crossway’s ESV Bible Windows Phone app. Most of my listening time does happen during driving and I have an old school car that doesn’t integrate with my smartphone, a Nokia Lumia 920. While the Lumia has a pretty loud speaker for a phone, listening to books over the headset rocks. Also, if a text comes in, it reads it to me and I can respond to text through voice; convenient and safe. If a call comes in, I simply take it and then start again where I left off. Nice.

So, the whole gamut of listening experience is available. Now, most wireless headsets that can play music are stereo for obvious reasons. For equally obvious reasons, I won’t drive with a set of cans on my ears. Listening through one ear allows me to keep current on my books safely. Truth be told, prior to the Jawbone, I would pop my headset off the second I was out of the car, unless on a call, because even a geek like me doesn’t want to be wearing a Bluetooth headset as a fashion accessory. However, I pushed aside what little fashion sense I may have had with the Jawbone; shopping in Target while listening to a book is fabulous. It only gets embarrassing as I laugh out loud or otherwise visibly respond to what’s happening in the book; on a good note, it clears the aisles for me as I walk through.

So, if you love audio books and don’t have a Bluetooth device that can play them, I highly recommend the Jawbone Icon HD. I’ve been able to listen to many more books than I would without it. If, like me, you need to slow down from time to time and really digest the passage, this can be accomplished through bringing up the Kindle edition of the book and pick up at the same spot for denser reading. This is particularly easy with Whispersync for Voice (about which more here) which allows you to pick up where you left off between Audible and Kindle editions. (To the Audible development team – thank you for updating the Audible Windows Phone app to finally enable this.)

If you have a tablet, laptop or other device that’s Bluetooth enabled and has a USB port, you can use The Nerd, a USB audio adapter, to connect your Icon HD headset to it. You can listen to books, use it for Skype or whatever else without having to pair it with that particular tablet or laptop. Once I paired my headset with The Nerd, I can put it in any machine, PC or Mac, and I’m ready to listen through my headset. Whether the machine has native Bluetooth support or not, you can use the Nerd without pairing with each device. So, if my battery is getting low on my phone or my son is playing a game on it, I just power up my Windows Surface tablet and, bada-bing, I’m off listening again.

OK, now it’s time for true confessions of serious nerdiness: one of the cool things Jawbone allows you to do is customize the “operators” voice on the Icon, the one which tells how much talk time you have or that it’s ready for use. I use “Be Foxy” which sounds like a female British spy; it’s a bit like having Naomie Harris’s Eve Moneypenny whispering in your ear. Nice. You can change default behaviors and there are other cool apps for the headset, but I’ll try to restrain my geeking out about them all. Suffice it to say, Jawbone does an outstanding job supporting their headset and surrounding it with all sorts of options.

Finally, I can listen to voice directions from Nokia’s Drive app; the rest of the car doesn’t have to listen to “Now turn right” and I can hear it easily over car conversations. By the way, just to continue the theme, I downloaded the British female voice for Drive.

I can never see myself going back to just a regular headset. In fact, I was willing to fork over money for a new one after just a couple of months when my headset went through the wash. I highly recommend that you don’t try to replicate this experience, but after I allowed it to dry out for a couple of days, it worked great. Now that’s a solid headset.

So, I took the plunge – I switched platforms – I was all in on Google – I used Google Mail, Drive, Blogger, Sites and Analytics, just to name a few of Google services. So, I was already fairly ensconced in the Google world when I originally hopped on the Android platform on August 30, 2010 with the Sprint’s Samsung Galaxy S device, the Epic 4g. (I actually tried an Android phone a couple weeks before this, the Samsung Moment – really not ready for prime time phone.) This phone, especially as a smartphone, was light years ahead of anything I’ve ever used. I could still use a real keyboard, the screen was a beautiful bit of 4″ Super AMOLED goodness and it could handle any media I could throw at it. Overall, it was a good mix of tools and experience. Not always the most polished, but dead simple and worked reasonably well. At the time, it made the best sense for me. I was tied to Sprint at the time and so iOS was out, Windows Phone 6.5 really wasn’t a viable choice (it just didn’t work well) and Blackberry was limited as well. No, at that time, Android was the right choice. It’s amazing what a difference 2 1/2 years makes.

Sprint’s network in the Raleigh area was good and with a good roll-out of WiMAX (LTE wasn’t out yet). Yes, the GPS on the Epic was worthless and the ability to grab calls a bit dicey, but not terrible. Mobile life was pretty good.

Samsung Epic 4g

So, why not stay in the Android world when it was time for an upgrade? First, the fractured platform: the original Epic 4g made it to Gingerbread. This took a long time. At the time I bought Epic, I thought, I’m not just buying a phone, I’m buying into a growing, improving platform. Not so much. The platform may improve, but you’ll need different hardware to improve with it. That’s true, to some degree of all platforms, but the fractured base of Android exacerbates this problem. Second, there was some awkwardness in the interface and OS. Enough halts, freezes and crashes to get tiresome. Finally, I really like the subscription model of music – it allows you to explore à la Pandora while giving more control (I still listen to albums). Spotify wasn’t on Android yet and I prefer Xbox Music (formerly Zune Service) anyway. Finally, there was the siren call of that lovely hardware package: the Nokia Lumia 920. Flat-out gorgeous, lovely to hold, a joy to use and it simply works. Oh, and did I mention the camera? You know, the one with optical image stabilization and Carl Zeiss lens that allows for good low-light pictures? By the way, regarding the weight and thickness comments, I’m not quite so feeble that I can’t carry it or hold it. If I do let it go, it will survive. See PhoneBuff’s drop test. Oh, and the wireless charging. Wow, I love just dropping it on the charger and picking it up without having to think about wires. And the…, well, this list could go on.

Nokia Lumia 920

I was already tempted by Windows Phone 8 – a cool new interface; traversing this multi-tiled landscape across a field of smooth tapered glass was a joy compared to selecting icons on my old Android. But wait… I’ve invested all this time in the googleverse, some money on apps and the platform is growing. Do I want to make the effort to switch? Learning a new OS and apps on a somewhat risky platform that still hasn’t reached a huge following yet seems a bit of a stretch. First, it wasn’t that much of risk; it was unlikely that Windows Phone wouldn’t survive my contract. Mostly, I don’t want to be driven by fear, especially on something like a phone choice. So, live on the edge, learn some new stuff and stave off the onslaught of weakening mental faculties for just a little bit longer. Seriously, the interface is intuitive and there are so many apps in common (Evernote, Pandora, WordPress, Kindle, Audible …), the new ones are fairly straight-forward to learn and the Windows 8 UI is dead-easy. Switching is one of the best moves I’ve made. Is it a perfect experience? No. There are a few (less than you would think) apps that aren’t native on the platform I would like. Yes they have counter-parts but they typically aren’t as good (with exceptions like Graffiti Radio, a Pandora client which is better than a very good native Pandora client). I’ve had the phone lock a couple of times (like 2). The overall experience is a delight. Oh, and it really works as a phone and the GPS is dead on.

At the same time, I moved to AT&T. I’ve heard all the “Attempt to Talk” jokes and how much more fabulous Verizon’s network is. Probably true, but I can simply speak to my 5 plus months experience – it has been outstanding. Calls connect, texts reach their target immediately and the LTE roll-out in the Triangle is wicked fast. Your mileage may vary. Sprint’s customer service was fine, but the network severely deteriorated the last couple of years. Since AT&T was the only place to get the Lumia, I took a chance, tested the heck out the network the first 14 days and have never regretted the move since. (My wife and daughter have moved over as well with Android and Windows Phone 7 devices. My son will follow suit in a month on iOS; we’re a diverse family.)

So, I’ve drunk the Microsoft cool-aid for now. I use Skydrive, Office on-line (much better formatting and familiar function), Outlook email and the non-Microsoft WordPress for blogging. Overall, it all works better. Is the Googleverse bad? No, I haven’t completely abandoned it. But I prefer the new; moreover, I definitely appreciate my mobile interface to it – for example, documents render so much better now.

Nokia itself is fabulous; they care in ways I never saw from Samsung. Adding apps, updating with improvements and producing sturdy, beautifully designed handsets. They have a commitment which Samsung never showed. I’m not worried about a seriously delayed or never adopted update because the OS is fragmented from the original development code.

Is my experience the same as someone else’s would be? No. Because I went to a new network, a better spec’d phone and more recently updated OS, I received benefits I would have on any phone. Had I gone to Samsung Galaxy S3 on AT&T, my experience would have improved as well. So what sets my Lumia experience apart? The delight factor. The Lumia and Windows Phone 8 is a delight to use. From it’s feel in the hand to the live tiles showing the weeks of the weather (I love Weather Flow), it’s simply a joy to use. For me, the S3 would have been a good, improved tool, but just a tool. (The S4 would be a very large, good tool. Seriously, 5″?)

So take a risk; try something new. Even if it’s not Windows Phone 8, experiment a little.

Like this:

Convergence, Diversity and the Right Tools

The life of the road warrior has fundamentally benefited from the improvement and convergence of technology. They can take less with them and do more with what they have. The cell phone has probably enabled the lighter and more capable office than any other device. In one device, we have a digital music and video player, digital recorder, HD camcorder, gps, camera, mobile hotspot and phone as well as a place to do limited document creation and updates, email, reading and note taking (not to mention audiobook player – I love Audible). Combine this with something like Microsoft’s Surface and you have a quite small footprint to do a ton of work. Now, not everything is about convergence; nearly by definition there are compromises taken in multi-purpose devices. Price of more focused devices have come down considerably, for example, the least expensive Kindle can be had for $70 while their best Kindle, the Paperwhite, it still just $120. So, now you can take your library with you in an eminently readable format that’s easy on your eyes. Moreover, with the reduced sized, e-reader, smartphone and tablet with keyboard come to under 3 lbs. Throw in a notebook when you’re feeling old school, you’re still at less than 4 pounds. That’s what a regular business-class desktop notebook would weigh. My particular poison is a Kindle Paperwhite, Microsoft Surface RT, Nokia Lumia 920 and Moleskine Large Ruled notebook. There is very little I can’t do with these tools.

Whilst our dear friends, the road warriors benefit, so do those of us blessed with (mostly) staying home. This mobile office also works when I have a quick meeting at Starbucks, catch up on reading at the dentist office or hunker down in the bedroom when vociferous friends are watching movies with your kids downstairs. My visits to in-building conference rooms for meetings are now with the Surface and Moleskine notebook. So our micro-traveling in the daily course of our lives is improved and more productive, whether for work or personal goals. It even helps when trying to fit your work on those little café tables at Starbucks. The largest dimension of these items is under 11″.Where it’s a trip across town or across the pond, our lives have been significantly easier and more productive (other than our actual airport experience). To help put this in perspective, let’s think about that travelling life not long ago:

Going to a conference: Old School

Going to a conference: Current

Prep & Pack

What you need to remember – you have lots of things to bring with you.